Dear Representative Reed; Ellen’s Valentine

We come to your office today to voice our opposition to the disastrous policies that President Donald Trump is enacting and that you are supporting.

On this day that we celebrate love, we remember in Mark’s gospel that Jesus says, the greatest commandment is to Love the Lord our God with our whole heart and whole mind and the second commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves. President Trump’s executive order to build a wall on the boarder with our neighbor Mexico, and to aggressively round-up undocumented people in this country is the opposite of following Jesus’ command.

In the words of the Jesuit priest, Father James Martin “At the Last Judgment, (Jesus) will say to people, ‘I was a stranger and you did not welcome me.’ And people will say, ‘When were you a stranger and we did not take care of you?’ And he will say, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ … It is Christ whom we turn away when we build walls. It is Christ whom we reject when we slash quotas for refugees. It is Christ whom we are killing, by letting them die in poverty and war rather than opening our doors.”

How can we be silent as families are torn apart, children are terrified, parents are detained. As we saw last Thursday with a family in Arizona where Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, the mother of two teenaged American citizens was deported after being in this country and paying taxes for 21 years. I ask you not to be an accomplice to hate and fear. I speak to you today as a fellow Roman Catholic and I implore you to be guided by love for our neighbor and as Pope Francis said last Wednesday build bridges not walls. I ask that you stop supporting Donald Trump and his policies of fear. God bless and keep you.